the anti-Whitlock

IMHO you are 100 percent wrong pallister. anonymity guarantees conversations will be as close to honest as possible, not hinder it.

whitlock comes here to further his shtick and continue on with his self appointed roll (pun intended) as being the policeman of sports journalists. you on the other hand, appear to live inside this little bubble of higher moral ground than the rest of us.

the rest of us, well, i guess all i can do is speak for myself, am tired of representing my paper at the end of the day. when i'm at work, i represent my paper. when i'm at the grocery store picking up dinner for the little heartbreakers, people approach me as tom petty sports editor, and once again i'm representing my paper.

if i go to my daughter's soccer game, yeah, the paper. in fact, i have a hard time watching her games because people usually want to talk sports, and not the one being played in front of us. if i were to get a dui, guess what, it would go in my paper, and the papers that intersect our coverage zone as 'TImes SE drunk as hell while driving' and then the name tom petty would probably appear in the subhead.

i represent my paper most of my waking life and i have to act the part, and that gets a little tiresome after awhile. and, if i had to post under my real name here, guess what? yeah, more representing of the paper and no true dialog.

at some point and time, it's comforting to know i can speak (write) without an audience judging the se of the times ... much like speaking in front of influential children 24 hours a day.

for the rest of us, it's nice to say what we really are thinking about our business and those who compose a chunk of it with honestly ... without representing anyone but ourselves.

using your real name is no badge of courage, instead, it only red flags me that you're not being totally forthcoming.

 

By "say what we really are thinking," you mean bitch and moan about work on every thread possible and do it anonymously because you'd never say those things to the actual people they're directed at.

As for the second part, there's not a single work-related thing I've said on here I already haven't said to peers/supervisors in a newsroom or wouldn't say to anyone's face if the situation arose.

I'll take you at your word that SportsJournalists.com anonymity allows you to be honest. But that just means you're not honest in your day-to-day dealings in the business.

 

you are oversimplifying the topics of this board in an attempt to prove your point.

as for the second point of your post, if you actually share your deepest thoughts of how you feel about work in the office, and you are still employed, you are a very simple person.

i don't care if you work on wall street or at mcdonalds, some of the shit you come home with at the end of the day is inappropriate in the workplace.

 

No, I'm honest and I'm not afraid to speak up when I think something needs to be said. If more people in this business were willing to do that, they wouldn't waste so much time away from the office complaining. My approach doesn't always work. But that's who I am.

I'm not one person at work and another in cyberspace.

 

again with the moral high ground. nice.

the funny thing is, i'm way too honest at work, and it often gets me into trouble. while i refuse to bitch in front of people i supervise, i often tell my editor how and what i'm thinking, but never how i feel.

from all accounts, you come across as the guy who wants to be known for saying, "yes honey, you do look fat in those pants." that shtick doesn't fly at home and it sure as to hell doesn't fly at work, either.

 

Anytime someone trots out the "moral high ground" argument, it's a backhanded way of saying they're the superior ones. Spare me. Anyone who knows me can tell you that feeling superior to others is not one of my faults. Hell, I bet my approach has cost me more than it has helped me.

From the beginning of this, I never said people shouldn't be anonymous. I just think the cons outweigh the pros. I also never said my approach to work is any better than anyone else's. In fact, or two consecutive posts I've alluded to the pitfalls. You're the one makng value judgments about me and what I'm saying. You continue to be petty, fine with me. I'll continue to be who I am.

Just keep on keepin' it real on SportsJournalists.com and we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

hey pallister, you look fat in those pants.

 

That, too, was one helluva post. Nicely played.

It strikes me that almost everyone who DOES use their real name is a high-profile entity. Take from that what you wish; I know what I take from it.

 

At the risk of thread-jacking, I want to chime in that I've long thought Shaun is one of the best in the business -- truly underrated and underappreciated.

No schtick.

No nonsense.

Just good column after column.

And when he introduces race into a column, I know it's for a reason rather than just reflex. Which makes me very interested in what he has to say when he does write about race.

 

I think it's fine that some people want to be anonymous and I think it's fine that some people want to post under their real names. The only thing that bugs me is when the same person does both -- in effect beating their chests about how accountable they are and then an hour later being a weasel behind a different screen name. They're like Sybil.

I do favor anonymity. I've sent letters under my own name that were posted on Romenesko, expressing some of the same controversial viewpoints about the business that I've shared here. I write under my real name there because it's required, but I do not identify my newspaper because I do not speak for my newspaper.

Here I don't post under my real name because I like the leave-your-rank-at-the-door nature of this place. All these years on this board and the other one and I still have no idea who 21 and Doubledown are, but I respect what they have to say even when we disagree. Other informed anonymous posters whose identities I know, well, I wasn't surprised when I found out they were accomplished people. It's kind of hard to fake knowledge of the business when you're communicating with people in the business. Anonymous or not, we know which posters are writing from experience and which aren't. If someone needs name and rank in order to discern whether to assign credibility, he's in the wrong business because half of being a journalist is separating the good stuff from the bullshit.

 

Exactly.

 

I think it's Stupid and unprofessional to post under your real name.